The Fusionist Book 5 -- Chapter 45

Chapter 45

“Where are they?” Nedira grumped, staring out over the edge of the box. “They should be in sight according to the schedule.”

“Perhaps they changed it? Or went a different way other than what was left at their compound?” He wasn’t sure why they would do that, since it seemed like a good – if foolish – plan. “Unless… they left them there deliberately?” he proposed.

After traveling for a full day, following the route marked out on the maps they’d taken from Warshdin, they hadn’t seen any sign of the Strike Faction. It didn’t help that no tracks were left behind from their passage on the stone landscape, but even so, both Larek and Nedira had thought that would see some sort of indication that they were going in the right direction. Unfortunately, there was absolutely nothing… at least nothing regarding the ones they were seeking.

But that didn’t mean they didn’t see anything at all. Flying over the Calamity’s territory was relatively uninteresting, as while they eventually saw what appeared to be random sightings of Steel Slimes and even a single Rainbow Slime, there really wasn’t much variety in the environment. Some places had more metal poles that replaced trees than others; a few areas had rivers that appeared unchanged at a glance, but once he looked closer at them, he realized they weren’t clear but slightly greyish in color; and there was even one section the map they were following had them go around, which appeared to be dozens of large, spiky boxes that was identified as being a small town at some point in the recent past. Why the route went around it, he wasn’t sure, but he couldn’t deny that it appeared very unwelcoming in general.

But those were just the boring parts. What was interesting to see were the subservient Aperture territories, because they provided a significant contrast to the almost monochrome color of the rest of the environment. “Normal” environments, as in grassland or forests, appeared like little oases upon a sea of darkness, and the more extreme territories such as one that contained snow and ice, or, in another instance, one that seemed themed after light and illumination, were nearly blinding in their intensity.  At one point he saw a desert that reminded him of Lowenthal, and another Aperture seemed to be some sort of swamp-like area, with decaying vegetation and stagnant-looking pools of water. In total, they passed by a total of 13 different Apertures as they followed the route on the maps, though most of them were at a distance. Only a few of them was he able to actually see any monsters, but these were all relatively weak in strength because they were culled more often by those venturing inside – such as those belonging to the Defense Faction.

From what he understood, it was this constant culling that prevented the Calamity from expanding any further; if it was ever interrupted for a significant amount of time at any point around the perimeter of the Calamity, there was a chance that it would lead to the expansion of its territory. It was this fact that led to the creation of the Defense Faction, or so he’d learned, because keeping it stable through defense rather than attempting to close the Aperture at the center was safer… and more profitable.

From the notes he’d read, the Strike Faction despised the short-sighted and profit-minded objectives of the Defense Faction, who hunted subservient Apertures just inside the Calamity for meat and other useable resources, but they also killed and harvested the steel that came from Steel Slimes – just like the ones that had caused the Calamity in the first place.  It was this fact that made very few of those keeping it stable and “safe” from wanting to close it, as it made those kinds of resources easy to acquire without too much effort.

Larek could see both sides of the argument and agreed somewhat with both of them, even if he leaned more toward eventually achieving the Strike Faction’s end result.

But not like this. However well-thought-out their plan was, they just didn’t have the people or the resources to defend against the entire Calamity’s worth of monsters.

“Why would they do that? Why would they leave deliberately false information inside their… conveniently empty… poorly defended… compound?” Nedira asked, comprehension clearly dawning on her as she spoke.

“What is it?”

“Remember how we were attacked back at Warshdin? I can only assume that the animosity between the two Factions is greater than we know, and all this information we gained was meant for the Defense Faction to find.”

“Why? What’s the point of that?”

She shrugged. “Who knows? Perhaps they are setting a trap in case the Defense Faction follows them? Maybe they aren’t actually heading for the center to close the Aperture but are planning something else? I suppose it doesn’t really matter why they did it; what matters now is that we don’t know where they actually are.”

Larek didn’t like the explanations Nedira came up with, even though he didn’t have any proof that they weren’t accurate. It was more a feeling that the Strike Faction was actually going through with their original plan to close the Aperture, even if their route and itinerary found back at the compound was false.

Shaking his head, he said, “Not exactly. I have a very good feeling that they haven’t given up on their original plan to attack the Calamity’s main Aperture, so they’re more than likely still heading there. We might not know precisely where they are right now, but we still know their destination.”

“I’m not sure I agree, but I’ve learned to trust you when you get these ideas into your head,” she said with a brief chuckle. “So, if it’s the case that they are still moving toward the center of the Calamity, what’s the plan?”

Larek needed a moment to rest and think. Setting the Pattern box down on the obsidian covering the environment around them, he absorbed the Pattern Cohesion and sat down on the slightly warm ground. They’d taken a few breaks over the last day, getting just enough rest to keep going, but he was starting to feel extremely exhausted. From leaving at night from Fort Hilltower until now, he’d only gotten a few hours of sleep over the last few days, and it was catching up with him. He had hoped that their journey through the Calamity would’ve been nearing completion by now, but that didn’t seem like it was going to happen anytime soon.

Pulling out his Secure Hideaway Fusion, he activated it to camouflage them from any monsters that might wander by, even if they hadn’t seen anything near them from above.

“More than anything, we both need to get some decent sleep,” he began, pulling out some bedrolls from his Void Pocket Sack followed by some meat and bread. It wasn’t exactly evening yet, but it was still late enough that he could consider this dinner. “After that,” he said around mouthfuls as the both of them chewed rapidly through their meals, “we’ll have to make a new plan. I mean, we could fly over this entire section of the Calamity and still miss them if we’re not looking in the right place at the right time.”

“Absolutely,” Nedira agreed. “I’ll take a look at the maps in the morning and see if I can figure out where they really went.”

After they were done eating, they settled down in their bedrolls, with Nedira placing hers right next to Larek’s so that they could share them together. As he laid down on his back, she snuggled up next to him and rested her head on his chest with her arm draped over him; within seconds, she was asleep, and it didn’t take long for him to follow her into dreamy unconsciousness.

* * *

The Martial Fusionist woke up abruptly, his sense of something wrong screaming at him. It only took a half-second for him to apply his Magical Detection Skill to his surroundings, where he immediately discovered absences in the area around his Secure Hideaway; as his eyes flew open and he turned his head to the side, he discovered what it was that he sensed.

Around the perimeter of the barrier that protected them were a half-dozen metallic-colored blobs which he immediately recognized as the Steel Slimes they had been seeing periodically as they traveled through the Calamity. With the early morning sun just breaking over the horizon, Larek was able them clearly and on the same level to see that they were approximately 5 feet wide and 3 foot tall shiny metallic blobs, but that changed as they moved. Stretching themselves up until they produced a single arm-like appendage, the Steel Slimes then slammed their amorphous arms down on the Secure Hideaway’s barrier like a powerful fist knocking on a door.

Except that these knocks were powerful enough to crush someone into goo if they weren’t careful. What they were also doing was cracking open the defenses of his Fusion like a hammer to a walnut. He’d never actually had something attack the air barrier around his Secure Hideaway like this before, and while he knew it had 500 damage resistance, he could immediately sense that it wasn’t going to be enough. Against one or two of the Steel Slimes, it probably would’ve been fine; against six of them, however, it wasn’t able to withstand their constant attacks as they pounded on the barrier with no obvious end in sight.

“Nedira, wake up!” he yelled, probably a little too loud for the woman still draped across him, but he’d apologize later. As gently as he could, he pushed her off of his chest and sprang to his feet after momentarily getting tangled up in his bedroll, and it only took a second to grab his Void Pocket sack, reach inside, and then pull out his halberd. Grasping it securely in his hand, he was glad that he had taken the time during one of their rest stops to add at least a Strengthen and Sharpen Edge +7 Fusion to the blade and point, as well as a Strengthen +10 Fusion to the shaft; he was still intending to add some other Fusions, such as the VREP to the butt end to act as a Mage staff would, as well as a Variable Elemental Gust Sphere to the stabbing point on the opposite end, but hadn’t had the chance to do that quite yet. They’d been on the move since he’d had to flee the Fort, and the two Fusions he did manage to add were only possible because they didn’t take long or require too much focus – which recovering from using too much focus for his Pattern box to fly was the main point of stopping in the first place.

Just as he settled himself into his stance, with Nedira groggily waking up and coming to terms with what was happening, the air barrier suddenly disappeared after all six of the Steel Slimes impacted it within a second of each other. To Larek, there was an odd feeling that grabbed his attention, and he immediately looked down at the steel plate that he had used for his Secure Hideaway Fusion; it took him a full second to comprehend what had happened, and he stared at the Fusion in disbelief.

Or more accurately, he stared at what used to be a Secure Hideaway Fusion, but was now what appeared to be a solid grid of Pattern Cohesion. All of the symbols and connections had been fused together, completely eliminating any Effects, Magnitudes, Inputs, Variables, Activation Methods, or Mana Costs. The Mana that had been infused into the formation was still present, but all it did was sit inside the solid grid, doing absolutely nothing.

I guess that’s what happens when the barrier breaks or gets overwhelmed; I guess we’re lucky it didn’t crack completely and blow up.

He would’ve thought that it the barrier would’ve simply shut down if it received too much damage, but he realized that he hadn’t put any contingency inside the formation to make that happen. It was something that he’d have to fix in the future, because he couldn’t count on it simply fusing all together and not exploding the next time it happened.

The Steel Slimes were already moving toward them as soon as the barrier came down, and while Larek was distracted by the broken Fusion, one of them rolled close enough to him to start stretching out an appendage that was intending to smash into the Fusionist just as it had smashed through the barrier.  His combat awareness eventually snapped him out of his contemplation of his Fusion and he instinctively swept out with his weapon, its length more than long enough to reach the extended appendage. Its blade was sharp enough that it cut through the Slime’s reaching pseudo-arm, and as soon as it was separated from the rest of its body, it suddenly hardened from the jelly-like appearance it had before and fell to the ground in an inert lump.

The metallic monster’s body seemed to ripple and vibrate for a second after it lost a portion of its bulk, showing that it at least was aware of what happened, if not being affected by pain. It hesitated for a brief second as it pulled its cleaved appendage back into its body, but that was all the opening that Larek needed. Seeing that he could damage it, he stepped forward and quickly slashed once, twice, and then three times, cutting large chunks of the Slime off its main body. He could tell that just before impact, the Slime would suddenly harden its exterior to the consistency of steel, but his halberd blade was sharp enough to cut even through the hard metal defense.

The “wounds” he caused seemed superficial as the monster simply condensed upon itself and reformed smaller, but that was when he remembered that Slimes had internal cores; destroy the core inside of them and the Slime would die. As such, he switched to stabbing the monster with the point of his weapon, hoping that he would get lucky and pierce wherever the core was located. As he did this, he glanced at Nedira behind him as she got to her feet after grabbing the staff that always laid next to her as she slept, and she immediately began launching magical projectiles even as she swayed a little from the abrupt awakening.

Thankfully, she seemed to understand what was happening without him explaining, and a steady stream of flying stones flew out of the tip of her staff, piercing through exterior of the Steel Slimes, as they were largely magical in nature. Still, the monsters’ physical resistance played a part by not letting the stone slivers penetrate more than a few inches, but when dozens of them slammed into one of the Slimes in concentrated rapid succession, it was enough to push them deeper, eventually traveling far enough to find and pierce the core. As soon as that happened, the metallic monster immediately froze and hardened into a stone-filled blob of steel, completely inert.

Meanwhile, Larek also got lucky and managed to find the core in the one he was fighting, as he pierced the point of his halberd deeply into its body. Unfortunately, the form of the Slime flowed over the head of his weapon trapping it inside; when it hardened into pure steel, his weapon was trapped inside and he couldn’t tear it out. Even as he yanked on the shaft in a vain attempt to extricate it, the other four Slimes were already closing in on them; Nedira engaged one and would be able to kill it, but not before the other three reached the both of them.

Abandoning his weapon, he reached down and pulled a bundle of Mage staves from his sack; before he could untie the rope that bound them together, a steel appendage flew toward him and he instinctively pointed the entire bundle toward the attacking slime and mentally activated the same barrage of flying stones to emerge from the few staves he was actively touching.

To his surprise, he apparently didn’t need to touch all of them, because all 20 of the staves fired simultaneously. A veritable wall of sharp stone slivers flew out and struck the Slime, over and over again, completely obliterating it within two seconds. As Larek got over his shock of watching stone and chunks of steel flying backwards from the incredible impact, he turned the bundle toward the other two Slimes and did the same thing, killing them almost as soon as he aimed at them, finishing them off just as Nedira killed the other one she was defending against.

“What… what was that?”

Larek looked a little sheepishly at her as he held the bundle in his hands. “Uh, well, I couldn’t get one of them undone in time?” he asked with a shrug and a quiet laugh. The laughter faded as he looked down at the bundle, immediately noticing the price he had to pay for doing such a thing.

The Fusions on all of the staves were degraded and fading away even as he watched. With the incredible amount of ambient Mana that was sucked from the environment in such a short amount of time, the VREP Fusions – being in such close proximity – basically cannibalized each other to feed the magical Effects of the Fusions. Thankfully, they weren’t “destroyed”, which could cause them to explode; rather, they were drained and were unable to recover even as ambient Mana rushed into the area. As he watched, they continued falling apart and eventually faded, only leaving a hint of their former presence.

“Well, I guess that means I won’t be doing that again. Or at least not very often,” Larek said, dropping the bundle back into the sack. He would spend some time replacing those Fusions at some point, but not at the moment; he had more important thing to do, such as freeing his halberd.

Thankfully, all it took was using his Logger’s axe, which had an equally sharp Fusion on it, to cut away enough of the steel around the head of the halberd to free it. Once he had extricated it from the lump of dead Steel Slime, he looked around to see if there were any more Slimes headed their way.

While he didn’t see any more nearby, what he did see made him concerned. Approximately three miles to the northeast was a subservient Aperture with a grassland and forest environment, and while he had seen it from a distance, he hadn’t seen any monsters there. The maps they had were helpful in that regard, because they listed the types of monsters they would encounter along the route, and this one in particular was known to the map’s creator.

Razor Locusts.

And, if he wasn’t mistaken, there was a swarm of the 2-foot-long, razor-legged flying insect monsters heading their way. By the way they had left their territory, it became quite clear that they were coming to the defense of the Steel Slimes, even though they were already slain.

“Uh… we need to go. We need to go right now!”